


my reason

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Bad Ending, F/F, Implied Character Death, Post-P2IS Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 21:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15591555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: “Your birthday isn’t for a while, right?" Noriko ventures. "We’ll celebrate it with cake, how about that?”





	my reason

**Author's Note:**

> *uses same trope three times w/ different ships* *makes myself sad* 
> 
> this can be taken as an AU in that tatsuya didn't take yukino with him after mt. katatsumuri.

When Noriko asked her when her birthday was, one afternoon after practice, Anna shrugged, watching her fall out of step, and asked why it mattered for her to know. Noriko fumbled her way through a reply, Anna’s reticence disappointing but not surprising her, but all it took was a bit of rifling through the club’s archives, and there was the date, scribbled black on white in her big sister’s own familiar handwriting.  

The dust and deathly stillness in the house tells her all she needs to know. Noriko recalls the memory as she shoves past the door to Anna’s room, dragging the cardboard box with her. An old book, a year-old picture framed in pale wood, the jacket Anna threw over her once on an unexpectedly rainy afternoon that she hadn’t come around to returning. The tin of biscuits sits on top of the folded article, and on top of that is the single candle and box of matches she managed to salvage among the rapidly dwindling supplies she kept in the back drawer— just in case. She doesn't mind having to sleep in complete darkness for one more night.

With limited electricity and with most stores’ stock either looted or confiscated, finding the tin, unexpired no less, sitting undiscovered in the very back of one of her kitchen’s drawers had been a shining miracle all on its own. So she kept it, hid it, broke open her forgotten planner full of reminders and unfulfilled appointments from another lifetime, preparations for a future that slipped away from her for good when the world came to an end.

And she waited. She finds she’s very good at that game.

Noriko sits at Anna’s desk, wiping away the layer of dust that’s formed atop it, and runs her fingers down the pages, feeling for where the tip of her pen had pressed into unscathed paper. She flips through memories—  _last practice until midterms; pouring today, meeting cancelled; should visit the hospital—_  until she lands on the word “birthday”, sliding across the careful strokes until it leaves a trailing smudge of blue, and she sighs, stares at the ink smearing her thumb.

Then Noriko settles the picture frame upright, leans it against the electric lamp that won’t run anymore. She stares too long at it. Her chest tightens, water rises to her eyes— but she shakes it away, pulls out the tin instead.

It isn’t cake— Noriko imagines herself flustering an apology, a lame excuse;  _sorry, the line at the bakery was stupid long today,_  Anna rolling her eyes in reply,  _see, at least it has frosting,_  forgetting that it’s far too late now for daydreams— but the aluminum makes a satisfying clang when she sets it on the desk, and it breaks the silence acutely enough that the distraction gives her time to even out her breath and arrange the biscuits and lighted candle in a way that somewhat resembles a wobbly cake, in a generous interpretation of the term. When she’s finished, she even finds it in herself to smile, admiring her effort.

Anna’s jacket is warm and the sleeves are too long for her. She buries her face in them, breathing in the softener. She meant to give it back. But then the accident happened and Anna stopped coming to school and she had to try so hard to bridge the gap she’d formed between them, one plea at a time, and for a moment, she just— forgot.

For a moment, Noriko forgets.

_“Your birthday isn’t for a while, right? We’ll celebrate it with cake, how about that?”_

_“Has anyone told you that you’re weird? I mean— you’re the first person to bother asking.”_

_“I’ll remember it— I’ll even write it down so I don’t forget, promise.”_

_“You don’t have to get so worked up over it, you know.”_

“But you don’t mind,” Noriko says, broken out of her thoughts at last. Her voice quivers in the room’s oppressive stillness, “Do you?”

The silence answers for her.

Noriko closes her eyes, quiet for a long time. And if she whispers “please come back,” instead of  _happy birthday_  when she blows the candle’s flicker out, then no one has to know.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway norianna is my favorite p2 ship and i suddenly missed them again, & i've thought about this for like a year so go figure. thanks for reading + i hope this made enough sense.


End file.
